Hello. I am an RN still in the "new grad" category (less than 1 year nursing experience) who was recently hired on as a weekend supervisor at a LTC facility. It is a great facility and so far the job had not been too bad until this past weekend, when I was asked to put aside my administrative duties to cover for a nurse that had quit. I would actually have enjoyed doing the actual nursing work, if I had known what the heck I was doing! Due to my unfamiliarity with the patients and procedures on top of still doing alot of management/administrative stuff, it took me until about 2pm on both days to get all of the "morning" meds done. That's a whole other vent though.
My question is this, is there an urgent significance to low diastolic blood pressure? I received a phone call from the ADON because I had documented a blood pressure with only the systolic because I had not been able to obtain the diastolic. The patient was non-symptomatic and the systolic was within normal range at 122. I have worked in EMS before and we quite often had difficulty obtaining a full reading due to riding in an ambulance or whatever and many times would document a BP as systolic/palp. Now I realize that it might seem I was being lazy but I had tried several times to get a good reading and ended up taking one on her leg. I didn't really think anything of it until I got the phone call and the ADON said she "fixed" the documentation so I would not be liable if anything should happen to this patient in the near future and it came to light that I did not get her further evaluation for an "unobtainable diastolic". As far as I know, low diastolic (with a normal systolic) is not urgent but can cause damage over long-term...and there's no way of knowing if her diastolic was low or I just couldn't hear it because I was taking it in her leg. (Had never done that before) U
Sorry to babble about such a silly question but I'm really not understanding this. I would appreciate if someone could enlighten me! Thank you!
